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  • Broke but Innovative Thinking

    I have no idea if this is the right place to post this so please forgive me if it is in the wrong spot.

    To begin I have been playing EQ for a little over 5 years and have had a myriad of toons. My main is a CoA geared kitty beast (retired now as of about 3 days after the expansion, I love the Drakkin heh). Needless to say I always hated tradeskills and never even paid any attention. I was one of those who would go out and farm for the TS'ers because I was bored and I got some funds in return. Well when i had to do tailoring to make the helm so I could do my 1.5 I was upset. The game is forcing me to do something I hate. Fine whatever I did it. Several months go by and I start my 2.0, omg give me a break more tradeskills to do this one, come on SOE what are you doing to me, dont you know how much I hate tradeskills? Fine I did them and I still hated them.

    Then TSS came out, I was in beta and did alot of things there but most importantly I made a little drakkin and started doing all of the quests and working the tradeskills to make his armor and all that kind of snazzy stuff. The game went live and I immeadiately set to grinding up to lvl 75 so i could get all the phat loots and be even more powerful then I already was blah blah blah. Thats when it hit me, what am I doing, all of this content I will never even see because I bypassed it all before I even gave it a chance. I absolutely love the new expansion. I made a Drakkin Ranger named Camulus. Gave him a couple of items, weapons that is, and began my adventure as if I had never played EQ before. I have completed over 60 quests and have found a newfound joy for the game. Then my RL gf started doing some baking one day and I thought ya know what I have never really concentrated on this before so let me give it a shot. That was two weeks ago and I havent been able to stop since.

    Problem
    Yes I have several high level toons and I am still very broke. I usually have around 6 to 10k in the bank on each of my accounts, I have two. 5 years ago I would have been rich, but today thats really nothing. So I wanted to try to give you an idea of what I have done thus far to get my TS's where they are. The posted suggested guides are very helpful but I have found that with all the new expansions and recipies they are outdated to say the least.

    Before I begin it must be understood that I do have the ability to farm in mass quantity, specifically velium and do have another ranger with maxed forage.

    Baking/Fishing - Abysmal Sea never left there not once except to dump a bunch of stat food in the guild bank.

    First I got a fishing pole and bait, and I fished and I fished and I fished. Got several hundred pounds of crab and tuna. Conversions to 1 pound crab and tuna skilled up to around 18, then converting to meat skills to 38, cost to me so far, less then 2 plat.

    Second I have all this meat time to do something with it. So I just started following the quick list recipies for tuna and crab and opened up each one to see which ones i could make without ever leaving Abysmal, ie all vendor bought stuff. Not concerned about trivials or and hating to do 10 point over skill combines I just looked at all of them. I did every tuna and crab recipe on the list with the exception of cakes and pies (these require eggs) and finsihed up on Beer Batered Tuna/Crab Rolls. Total cost to me, less then 300 plat. Next on my list will be Deep Fried Treant Hearts to 250, nice drop rate on the hearts in Blightfire Moors. Additionally my fishing got up to 114 and Brewing upto 122 doing all of this in Abysmal.

    Next on my list to tackel was smithing. I looked and looked and looked for the most cost effective way to get my skill up as high as I could before I really had to start dumping plat. One item caught my eye. Fishbone Dart Tool. I had never seen nor heard of one of these, but its trivial at 146 and the items looked relativly easy to obtain. Scaler Mold, Coldain Velium Temper, and Velium Bits (2).
    Scaler Molds easy, 5s in pok,
    Coldain Velium Temper = {Celestial Essence(4)8p per combine} and {Coldain Heater (brewing)6g per combine}
    Velium Bits = (1) Coldain Velium Temper(2.6p) and (2) small piece of velium (free).
    Seems kind of steep on the pricing when you look at it considering per combine your using 6 celestial essence total. Remember this is the max value you will be spending. To off set this quite dramatically when i was farming my velium in crystal caverns I took my mixing bowl and about 5 stacks of celestial solvent. Every word and rune that drops in crystal caverns can be used to make celestial essence reducing the price to 4 gold. Do the math that drops your cost from 12 plat per celestial essence to 2.4 plat per celestial essence. Generally speaking most words and runes and gloves, tears, and scents can be used to make celestial essence. From now on i will always carry a couple stacks of solvent and my mixing bowl, hehe. I am not even going to mention all the extra minor gems and weapons you can sell in CC when farming. Not the velium weapons though, things like the frozen long sword and a couple others that drop. OK I am getting long winded, sorry I was just so excited when I was doing all of this and seeing how far I could go on so little plat. In 5 clearings of what I call the Shaft, where all the orcs are, I managed to guild bank 14 stacks of small pieces of velium, this took me just over 90 minutes. I guild banked all the velium and essence and hoped on the ranger. Step 1 celestial essence, yeah i dumped some plat to save time, but I didnt have to. raised brewing from 122 to 136 made tons and tons of this. Then I made the Coldain Heaters raised my brewing to 158, made about 380 of these 400 attempts.

    Ok now my finger is getting numb and I am getting close to the skill combines, next i do the velium bits, starting skill at 54 (newbie CR quest) so these were trivial, converted all small pieces to bits. Now I am getting really excited, here comes the skill combines, skill 54 trivial 146 /em crosses fingers, click, fail, click, fail, click, fail, click, fail, click, fail omg just let me make one so can can save the recipe i hate dragging items. Click, fail, click bingo WOOT i made one yeehaw. Recipe saved, combine fail combine fail, No skill ups yet, O no i have done something terribly wrong. Combine woot made another one Im on a roll now, combine fail skill up, WOOT, conbine fail skill up WOOT, this cycle went on for the next 40 or so combines then i ran out of velium. Yes i have like 13 failures in a row and made two Tools, then I had and i kid you not 39 skill ups in a row, my skill went from 54 to 93 and I am only down around 150 plat so far in my excitement I ran back down to get more velium and reloaded on essence and came back for some more, I did this 3 times total about 7 hours and now my skill is 146. No I havent made any banded, files, skewers, or any of that other stuff, just the quest to 54 and this, I am so **** excited right now, cant wait to get off work and go home and do some more.

    So does this sound like a reasonable plan to work up smithing, I love it and it works with my budget. Was considering spending a day or maybe two on my beast farming wos and mpg and rs to get tradeskill drops there and work on magnetic from 146, I love the huge dif in my skill and trivial, loosing the items means nothing cause its just pixels to me, but wowzers when you get that success at 54 on a 146 item it really does make Tradeskills so freaking awesome.

    Starting tailoring next and I have a cheap plan for that too. I am figureing with the exception of jewelcraft I should be able to get the other 6 to 200 for a total cost of less then 5k. I have the technology, I can rebuild the system, I am keeping a detailed journal at home so i can summarize my total cost when I am done, down to the copper and i am also keeping track of how much people give me to work on this and how much I just give away.

    Anywho sorry if I bored anyone or this is in the wrong spot. I am totally open to ideas and suggestions if anyone has a better option.

    Camulus

    Edit, o yeah i forgot to mention, the tool i made can be use with fish to make prepared fish and to get fish bones to make darts, fishing, tool made, fletching will go to 162, cost to me 0 plat. WOOT

  • #2
    Glad I saw this! Let me know what you end up doing for Tailoring, as that's my only skill that's still under 200...been doing acrylia studded stuff but only got 6 points of that left...I'm at 182 now. I'm curious if you find a better way to get up to 200 other than acrylia studded and then acrylia reinforced.
    Jmorgaia Tinybubbles
    70 Coercer
    Xegony


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    • #3
      Welcome to tradeskilling.

      Many of us with limited funds (and even some people that have the plat but chose not to spend it on trade skills) have done many of the same type of scenerios.

      I will make a minor suggestion, sometimes there are secondary markets on trade skill items that could make you some plat (and help that bank acount). You seem to be into farming velium, that is typically an excellent seller as it has many uses (including some of hte same skill up paths you mentioned) [and another oh-by-the- way, you will be able to use it gain soon to do enchanted velium bits which will take you all the wayt to 200 (222 if you spend the AAs or do not have another over 200 already), but requires a modified skill of 165 to start, hopefully you saved those coldain tempers].

      The other one I would mention would be treant hearts. I have seen them dropping in TSS zones (Moors and Mesa) but not extremely common and they are used in the bristlebane's challenge, so you might want to hold on to those or try to sell some in the bazaar. Misty Thicket Picnic are cheap recipe, if you can stand the subcombines (which you said you did not mind much) which will take you up to 300.


      For brewing, I would do mino her brew to 248 (very cheap recipe) then Kaladim Constitutionals to take you over 300, again sub combines and time consuming but pretty cheap, makes a great drink for self, has enough resale value in the bazaar that you can easily break even without having charge a lot for them.

      There are plenty of guides, like here:

      http://mboards.eqtraders.com/eq/showthread.php?t=25961

      that can make the process easier, but as I started out saying you have the basics down, keep doing what lets you have fun.



      Gorse
      Last edited by Gorse; 10-17-2006, 08:43 AM.

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      • #4
        Ah tradeskills

        The first I ever took up tradeskills was with my original character, a lowly Qeynos pally in Freeport (there were no smithing components to skill up with down that way in those days, so if you wanted smithing, you had to do the Freeport run).

        The lag was horrible back in the day, and there was no Shift or CTRL click to pick up, buy or sell stacks and individual components respectively, nor memorized recipes. Back then you had to buy item by item to make up a stack in your inventory. If you wanted a stack of short beer, you had to buy that short beer, one by one, stack after stack. You also had to use the slider to pick up 1 item from a stack in your inventory to place it in its applicable tradeskill container. With the appropriate lag for North Freeport on a 56 k dial-up line split between 4 pcs. Ore too, other than small pieces, weren't stackable. My friends raised eyebrows and whispered behind my back as I smithed my hours away to sell metal studs and boning to tailors.

        What added an extra edge to it all, was the fact that if you clicked on the "Combine" button of any container, it'd try to combine everything inside, deleting it all upon either success or devastating "failure", that's right... that sewing kit would eat up all your gems, weapons, armour, etc within it.

        Money for the tradeskiller who works at it with a 'non uber' main, is rare and painful to obtain. Half your money goes to TS, half to gear, and if you TS from your early levels, working your way up, you have to be prepared for EQ poverty. I personally never had more than 20 k in the bank of my own, and that's only because on that ocassion I had saved painfully slowly for a Jaundiced Bone Bracer of my own (joy)

        The velium hunt I must say, was slightly more exciting back when I started taking up serious tailoring (velious leathers) back in level 38, and holding for dear life to every word, rune, gem or weapon for that extra cash as that 1k to 2k plat pool decreased too fast with the tempers. Unfortunately back then it also meant running back to Thurgadin to sell it and get the Garzicor quest again to see if one day I had enough faction to sell in CC. Today the first thing I recommend to the velium farmer is DO NOT sell the velium weapons, they can be converted into ore

        Insofar as smithing is concerned, get ready to farm your *cough, cough* off soon. For the poverty striken tradeskiller there's the shadowscream road which I'm currently on. Fortunately, every skill-up gets you that much closer to having to say goodbye to shadowscream and humming orbs for ever and ever.

        --- An important note. If you have PoR, DO get your trophies (all of them) before you skill up any further. The top end trophy quests are expensive and painful, whereas if you get your trophies early on, all you need do is keep your little gimp trophy in your ammo slot as you skill away and forget about it altogether---

        Apart from that, welcome to the world of tradeskilling. It'll get frustrating but the reward is a warm feeling inside as you attain each skillup, let alone the excitement of the "will I fail this 50k combine?... Woohoo, success!! Look at it, look at it!" as the rest of the world answers with a "meh...". It's up there with bungie jumping, with its heights and with its lows.
        Last edited by Bigotes; 10-17-2006, 05:47 AM.
        Bigotes Mcbuff
        64 Shaman of The Tribunal
        Rage Veeshan, Luclin (Veeshan) server

        -Mastering ways to waste time instead of leveling- (frustrating uber wife with it)

        All skills capped [edit: a FEW skills capped *shakes fist at increased skill caps*], all Shrouds free, close to max AAs for 63.
        Otherwise:
        Brewing (300+T7), Baking (300+T7), Smithing (286+T5+M1), Alchemy (258+T5+M3), Pottery (230+T4+M3), else (200+T4), Artisan Charm
        Time Waste (300) + GM Procrastinating Console (PC)

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